UPDATED 

White supremacists are encouraging members to infect Jews with coronavirus: FBI

March 23, 2020 By Brad Reed


The FBI is warning that white supremacists have started encouraging their followers to contract COVID-19 and then intentionally spread it to police officers and Jews.

ABC News reports that the FBI’s New York office sent out an alert recently that warned neo-Nazi groups are pushing members to spread the virus though “bodily fluids and personal interactions” to their perceived enemies.

“The FBI alert, which went out on Thursday, told local police agencies that extremists want their followers to try to use spray bottles to spread bodily fluids to cops on the street,” ABC News reports. “The extremists are also directing followers to spread the disease to Jews by going “any place they may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.”

Michael Masters, the head of Secure Communities Network that coordinates security for synagogues, tells ABC News that neo-Nazis have been claiming that Jews are responsible for the spread of the virus in the United States.

“From pushing the idea that Jews created the coronavirus virus to sell vaccines to encouraging infected followers to try to spread the illness to the Jewish community and law enforcement, as the coronavirus has spread, we have observed how white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and others have used this to drive their own conspiracy theories, spread disinformation and incite violence on their online platforms,” he explains.
White supremacists discussed using coronavirus as a bioweapon
Federal law enforcement document reveals 

Hunter Walker and Jana Winter
22/3/2020 
WASHINGTON — White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items,” according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17. © Provided by Yahoo! News Right-wing extremists in Berlin in 2017 commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. (Maurizio Gambarini/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists’ communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has become popular with neo-Nazis. In the conversations, the white supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement agents and “nonwhite” people with attacks designed to infect them with the coronavirus.

“Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves,” reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24. “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it should any of them contract the virus.”

The Federal Protective Service, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is a law enforcement agency responsible for protecting buildings owned or leased by the federal government.

The intelligence brief, marked for official use only, noted the white supremacists “suggested targeting … law enforcement and minority communities, with some mention of public places in general.” According to the document, the extremists discussed a number of methods for coronavirus attacks, such spending time in public with perceived enemies, leaving “saliva on door handles” at local FBI offices, spitting on elevator buttons and spreading coronavirus germs in “nonwhite neighborhoods.”

The February document appears to show that at least some white nationalists were already taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously at a time when some in government were downplaying the threat. On Feb. 26, President Trump said that he expected the cases to go down to zero in the United States in “a couple of days.” The Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies were issuing “ominous” warnings about the virus in January and February.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the Federal Protective Service intelligence brief, the discussion of spreading the coronavirus occurred in a channel on the app Telegram that is devoted to the “siege culture” philosophies of neo-Nazi author James Mason and “accelerationism.” Mason wrote a series of newsletters titled “Siege” in the 1980s that advocated for acts of racial terrorism in order to hasten a war that would cause the breakdown of society.

White Supremacist Corona by Sharon Weinberger on Scribd

In recent years, Mason’s writings became popular among members of the violent neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and its offshoots. Mason could not be reached for comment. Growing numbers of white supremacists have also expressed interest in “accelerationism,” which involves advocating for extremist attacks with the express goal of provoking a larger societal conflict.

Nick Martin, who is the editor of the Informant, a newsletter focused on hate and extremist groups and a former investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Yahoo News that multiple newer neo-Nazi groups with younger members have brought Mason to prominence.

“There’s a whole branch of neo-Nazism that follows James Mason's writings and uses his work as kind of their bible. Atomwaffen is part of that, but there are multiple groups that would fall under the same category,” Martin said.

Homeland Security has identified white supremacist violence as one of the major domestic extremist threats facing the United State, and there has been a push to start tracking such groups the way U.S. intelligence agencies track foreign terrorists.

Atomwaffen Division has made headlines because of multiple criminal cases involving the group’s leadership. Martin, who has written extensively about the group, said some of his sources believe there is a possibility followers of Atomwaffen or similar groups could try to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic.


“There is a big concern right now — including from people who work in counterterrorism — that it’s an opportune time for these accelerationist groups to strike,” Martin said.

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Economist Paul Krugman: Mitch McConnell is trying to create a corporate ‘slush fund’ — and Democrats should ‘just say no’

March 23, 2020 By Alex Henderson, AlterNet


Liberal economist and veteran New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been stressing that any economic stimulus bills passed by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic must not be simply corporate bailouts, but provide genuine help for struggling U.S. workers. And in a March 23 Twitter thread, Krugman slams Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for trying to create a corporate “slush fund.”

McConnell, according to Krugman, is wrong to approach the economic fallout from coronavirus like the crash of September 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

“McConnell wants everyone to imagine that it’s like the immediate aftermath of Lehman, and that everything will collapse unless we give Trump a $500 billion corporate slush fund with no effective oversight,” Krugman asserts. “That’s totally unacceptable.”

That is, the clear and present need is for disaster relief, rather than stimulus. And notice how the debate over this relief is being framed: calls to help Americans in need are portrayed as "Democratic demands" rather than the decent thing to do.
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2020

The economist adds, “Even aside from trust issues, we have this thing called bankruptcy law that often allows corporations to remain viable entities even when they can’t pay their debts. There may be cases where that won’t be enough — but then you want conditions attached to aid, a la auto bailout.”

Krugman goes on to explain why he distrusts McConnell, writing that the Kentucky Republican “has shown that he can’t be trusted when it comes to corporate giveaways. Remember how that huge 2017 corporate tax cut was supposed to lead to an investment boom, and instead was spent on stock buybacks?”

Krugman is equally critical of President Donald Trump in his thread, tweeting, “Nobody in their right mind believes that we can trust Trump to use a slush fund in a non-corrupt way, as opposed to rewarding friends — including himself — and punishing enemies…. I mean, he won’t even use the power he has to order companies to produce urgently needed medical supplies. Not a chance that he would require good behavior from bailed-out businesses.”

But McConnell wants everyone to imagine that it's like the immediate aftermath of Lehman, and that everything will collapse unless we give Trump a $500 billion corporate slush fund with no effective oversight. That's totally unacceptable 8/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2020

And McConnell himself has shown that he can't be trusted when it comes to corporate giveaways. Remember how that huge 2017 corporate tax cut was supposed to lead to an investment boom, and instead was spent on stock buybacks? 12/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2020

Even aside from trust issues, we have this thing called bankruptcy law that often allows corporations to remain viable entities even when they can't pay their debts. There may be cases where that won't be enough — but then you want conditions attached to aid, a la auto bailout
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2020

In his thread, the Times columnist asserts that a spending bill passed by Congress needs to emphasize “disaster relief” for American workers.

“This isn’t 2008, when you arguably had to rush money to financial institutions to avoid immediate collapse,” Krugman tweets. “Stimulus is needed, but there’s time to do it right. Just say no to slush funds.”

So, once more: this isn't 2008, when you arguably had to rush money to financial institutions to avoid immediate collapse. Stimulus is needed, but there's time to do it right. Just say no to slush funds
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2020

Kushner behind plan to turn over pandemic crisis management to department with little medical experience: report

March 23, 2020 By Tom Boggioni


Buried deep in an article describing the rift between the Trump administration and U.S. companies awaiting instructions on what the government requires of them to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Times reports that White House adviser Jared Kushner was behind a move to transfer responsibility for dealing with health crisis to FEMA although the agency lacks deep experience in dealing with health-related crises.

After noting that “In interviews with participants in the process, from business executives to government officials, there is still widespread confusion about how much and what exactly each firm is supposed to produce,” the Times reports “The government has essentially thrown out its existing playbook for dealing with pandemics, seizing the issue from the Department of Health and Human Services and moving it to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

That, the report adds has officials already scrambling to get their arms around containing the pandemic scratching their heads at the decision that was the brainchild of Kushner.

As the Times’ Maggie Haberman, David Sanger and Anna Swanson write, as the “debate has played out in the White House Situation Room, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has thrown out the established government plan for dealing with pandemics, after concluding it was insufficient because it never envisioned a pandemic of this breadth. Mr. Kushner and other aides concluded that only FEMA had what they internally called the ‘battle rhythm” to be the lead agency.'”

According to former President Barack Obama adviser Christopher Kirchhoff, who wrote a detailed report on the government response to the H1N1 swine flu virus and the Ebola outbreak, the reassignment of responsibility is problematic on its face.

Kirchhoff pointed out that FEMA “…. has experience cleaning up after tornadoes and hauling in trailers for temporary housing,” but “it likely won’t know a thing about medical supply chains and devices.”

“While FEMA knows how to issue contracts rapidly and move goods, it is important not to ‘divorce the expertise from the execution,'” the analyst added.

As evidence of the fumbled turnover, the Times notes that “FEMA administrator, Peter T. Gaynor, an experienced emergency manager, was unable to say how many face masks had been shipped from national stockpiles, or how many had been ordered,” during an interview on CNN over the weekend, leading host Jake Tapper to refer to the lack of information as “alarming.”

Trump Bets Business Will Answer Call to Fight Virus, but Strategy Bewilders Firms

It remains unclear if the effort to enlist companies like General Motors, Apple and Hanes constitutes an effective strategy.


President Trump spoke on Saturday during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times


By David E. Sanger, Ana Swanson and Maggie Haberman
March 22, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s refusal to invoke the Defense Production Act to commandeer resources for the federal government is based on a bet that he can cajole the nation’s biggest manufacturers and tech firms to come together in a market-driven, if chaotic, consortium that will deliver critical equipment — from masks to ventilators — in time to abate a national crisis.

Over the past five days, after weeks of minimizing the virus and dismissing calls to organize a national response, administration officials have been pulling executives into the White House Situation Room, and connecting them by phone, in a desperate effort to unlock existing supplies and ramp up new production.

Rear Adm. John Polowczyk has been plucked from the staff of the Joint Chiefs, where he is a senior officer for military logistics, to run the effort to build a supply chain. And Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, is also playing a leading role. The government has essentially thrown out its existing playbook for dealing with pandemics, seizing the issue from the Department of Health and Human Services and moving it to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But it is far from clear that the effort to enlist companies like General Motors, Apple and Hanes, just a few of the firms that have promised to free up existing supplies of masks or repurpose 3-D printers to produce ventilator parts, constitutes an effective strategy.

In interviews with participants in the process, from business executives to government officials, there is still widespread confusion about how much and what exactly each firm is supposed to produce. Corporate executives say they face a bewildering number of requests from dozens of nations around the world, along with governors and mayors around the country, for scarce supplies. The White House has not said who will set the priority list for deliveries. And it is not clear that any of it will arrive in time for the cities and the states that are hit the hardest, including New York.

Yet, in declining to actually make use of the Korean War-era production act that he invoked last week, Mr. Trump is also avoiding taking personal responsibility for how fast the acute shortages of personal protective gear and lifesaving equipment are addressed.

On Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York made a public appeal for the federal government to take over the distribution of critical goods, arguing that Mr. Trump’s insistence last week that states should find the medical equipment for themselves was turning into a senseless free-for-all.

“Don’t get into this mad bidding war,” Mr. Cuomo said, noting that the federal reticence was resulting in huge price surges, hoarding and shortages in some of the hardest-hit locales, including New York City.

Only the federal government can require private firms to shift their production, Mr. Cuomo said. “If I had the power, I would do it in New York,” he said.

Yet as that debate has played out in the White House Situation Room, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has thrown out the established government plan for dealing with pandemics, after concluding it was insufficient because it never envisioned a pandemic of this breadth.

U.S. lawmakers try again on a $1.8 trillion stimulus plan.

The Fed says it will buy as much debt as it needs to cushion the blow for businesses.

Mr. Kushner and other aides concluded that only FEMA had what they internally called the “battle rhythm” to be the lead agency. But although the agency has experience cleaning up after tornadoes and hauling in trailers for temporary housing, “it likely won’t know a thing about medical supply chains and devices,” said Christopher Kirchhoff, who examined the capabilities of each government agency for the Obama administration and wrote a detailed report of its shortcomings in dealing with the H1N1 swine flu virus, and then Ebola.

While FEMA knows how to issue contracts rapidly and move goods, it is important not to “divorce the expertise from the execution,” Mr. Kirchhoff said.

On Sunday, the FEMA administrator, Peter T. Gaynor, an experienced emergency manager, was unable to say how many face masks had been shipped from national stockpiles, or how many had been ordered. “I can’t give you a rough number; I can tell you it is happening every day,” he said. That led Mr. Trump, in a late afternoon news conference, to begin to announce specific figures.

To Mr. Trump’s critics, the core problem is not the effort now underway, but the failure to address the issue over the past three years, after government-run simulations, including one code-named Crimson Contagion, revealed some of the huge vulnerabilities.

Mr. Trump’s likely opponent in the coming presidential election, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the administration’s effort was coming too late.

“Now a tragic and inescapable truth is clear: Even though the senior-most medical and intelligence experts in the United States government were sounding the alarm about coronavirus for months, President Trump neglected, minimized and lied about this virus,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “He failed to expeditiously get us enough tests, respirators, ventilators and other vital equipment when his peers in other countries did their duty and stood up for their people.”

Administration officials, asked why they have been reluctant to use the full force of the Defense Production Act to press industry into action, say the country is not in such dire straits. There is plenty of volunteer cooperation, they say, and there is always the implicit threat of ordering mandatory measures if they do not. Mr. Trump, at the news briefing, suggested an ideological concern as well. “We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business,” he said.

At the briefing, Mr. Navarro said, “We’re getting what we need without putting the heavy hand of government down.”

In an interview, Mr. Navarro said the administration would not hesitate to use its powers in certain situations. For example, he said, some brokers had been hoarding supplies of masks in warehouses and trying to sell them at exorbitant prices.

“That’s a Defense Production Act action waiting to happen,” he said. “If anybody thinks they’re going to sit on urgently needed supplies and profiteer from this crisis, they’re going to answer to the full force of the Trump administration.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the heads of major corporations have lobbied the administration against using the act. They say the move could prove counterproductive, imposing red tape on companies precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories.

Mr. Trump and the director of his national economic council, Larry Kudlow, as well as Mr. Kushner, were persuaded by those arguments, administration officials said.

The White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, during a coronavirus task force briefing on Saturday.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

Mr. Navarro has been coordinating with companies including FedEx, Hanes, Pernod Ricard and Honeywell to try to alleviate bottlenecks in the supply chain. Last week, he sent a cargo aircraft to Italy to fetch 800,000 nasal swabs for coronavirus testing, and pieced together a coalition of fabric companies to manufacture face masks out of underwear material. On Monday, FEMA was set to airlift 3,000 Tyvek suits, 19,000 masks and 75,000 pairs of gloves from United Technologies to New York, Washington and California, Mr. Navarro said.

Anderson Warlick, the chief executive of the textile company Parkdale Mills, said Mr. Navarro had called him early last week to ask what the company could make. By Saturday, Parkdale Mills joined Hanes, Fruit of the Loom and other companies in announcing a coalition to produce masks.

But they are not the kind hospitals most need. The new masks will be made of a three-ply underwear fabric, and do not provide the level of protection given by the N95 masks that health care workers need for intubation and other procedures.

“It’s not something you’re going to wear in the operating room,” Mr. Warlick said of the companies’ mask. “But you’ve got people out there today — it’s kind of pitiful — wearing bandannas and everything else.”

While the corporate announcements, like Apple’s move to donate millions of masks, may have generated some positive headlines for the Trump administration, critics say the ad hoc approach is falling far short of the challenge.

Industry executives say companies are reluctant to crank up production lines without purchasing guarantees from the government. With the economy in free-fall and factories shuttering around the country, few manufacturers are eager to invest in new machinery or venture into new products.

American companies that manufacture face masks, medical wipes and other supplies are already operating around the clock to meet elevated demand.

Among them, 3M has said it will increase its global production capacity by a third in the next year, but that falls far short of the current need. Honeywell is adding production for N95 masks globally, and General Electric said it was hiring more workers and adding shifts to produce more ventilators.

Factories that make diapers, wipes and similar products have also switched over to manufacture the raw material that goes into N95 masks.



Empty shelves that held surgical masks at Home Depot in Manhattan this month.Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times


To make that material, industry executives said, it would most likely take three to five months to obtain and install the necessary equipment and begin production.

Similar questions loom about ventilator production. The White House has highlighted promises by Ford, General Motors and Tesla to make the machines, but analysts said it could take many months for companies to create a product that would be approved as safe by regulators.

“Ford, General Motors and Tesla are being given the go ahead to make ventilators and other metal products, FAST!” the president tweeted Sunday morning.

Both General Motors and Ford have declined to say how quickly they might produce ventilators; they have never done it before. A spokeswoman for Ford said the company was still assessing the possibility of producing ventilators.

General Motors said in a statement that it was working with Ventec Life Systems, which already makes ventilators, to help it rapidly scale up its production, using GM’s logistics, purchasing and manufacturing expertise.

Carla Bailo, the president of the Center for Automotive Research, said the auto companies could use their 3-D printing capabilities to produce some parts of a ventilator fairly quickly, and then turn to their extensive network of automotive suppliers for other components, like electronics and hoses.

Ms. Bailo estimated that such cooperation might yield a product in as little as three to six weeks, though it would still need regulatory approval.

David E. Sanger and Ana Swanson reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Chris Cameron contributed reporting from Washington.

David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent. In a 36-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook

Ana Swanson is based in the Washington bureau and covers trade and international economics for The New York Times. She previously worked at The Washington Post, where she wrote about trade, the Federal Reserve and the economy. @AnaSwanson

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

Ancient Greeks purged city-states of disease as they would a human body – and it was the most vulnerable that suffered

LIKE THE MODERN AMERICAN EMPIRE IT WAS THE SENATE THAT BROUGHT DOWN THE GREEK EMPIRE
March 23, 2020 By The Conversation

https://collections.lacma.org/node/183358

With the spread of the coronavirus, the world is becoming pointedly aware of the extent to which human beings are interconnected. The rapid spread of the virus has highlighted how much we are dependent upon one another, not just for basic biological needs, but also for our sense of belonging and even commerce.

There’s nothing novel about this level of interdependence

As historians of early Christianity, we know that from the sixth century B.C., people in the ancient Greek city-state, or polis, were acutely conscious of this dependence. They dealt with disease spread as a result of living in close quarters.

The intimacy of human interaction meant that the city was seen not just as a community of co-dwellers, but as a kind of body. The Greek city-state, just like the human body, was protected by an outer layer.

The socially marginalized were most at threat when that body came under attack from disease – something that’s shared in the situation today.
The city as a body

For the city-states, the boundary was the city walls. Patrolling who entered the body was important for cities as well as its people.

The way people thought about protecting the city-states was much the same as they envisioned defending the body from diseases.

If a city had suffered a disaster, such as a famine or a plague, like the body, it needed to be purged or cleansed with blood or fire.

The way to purify the polis was a ritual known as the “pharmakos.”
Purifying the city

The most detailed example of this ritual is found in fragments of a work by sixth-century Greek poet Hipponax, who lived in Colophon, a city in Asia Minor – modern-day Turkey.

Often two people were selected, one male and one female, to serve as representatives of each gender. Later myths describe how those selected were usually society’s elite – kings, princes or virgins – who were to be sacrificed.

But the reality was very different. Modern-day surveys of the phenomenon have concluded that the person selected was usually a prisoner, perhaps a criminal or perhaps a prisoner of war, a slave, a person with a disability or a social outcast. They were often described, for example by the 12th-century Byzantine poet, John Tzetzes, as deformed or excessively ugly.

The playwright Aristophanes writes in “Knights” that they were “exceedingly low-born, penniless, and useless.” Anonymous ancient commentary on this passage suggests that it was those “mistreated by nature” that were targets for the rituals.

Aristophanes.
Alun Salt, CC BY-NC-SA

This person would be fed with the poor-quality food of slaves. He or she would then be beaten with twigs from a wild fig tree and driven out of the city.

In some cases, the pharmakos victims were not only beaten and exiled, they were also killed. The second-century A.D. author Philostratus tells us that in one outbreak of plague in Ephesus, a beggar was stoned to death.

It was believed that this ritual expulsion of the pharmakos served to cleanse the city from the famines or plagues that afflicted it.

According to the classicist Jan Bremmer, rituals like this took place throughout the Greco-Roman world.

Medical language

What is noteworthy is that at its root, the meaning of the Greek word “pharmakos” is “drug,” either a healing remedy or a poison. It is unclear to modern scholars whether the person designated as a pharmakos was viewed as a poison and the root of the city’s problems or if they were seen as the city’s cure.

In either case, the word pharmakos describes the ritual in explicitly medical language.

This dual nature of the pharmakos is in keeping with ancient medical understandings of drugs as being extremely powerful and having the ability to both kill and cure.
Parallels with today

This account of the Greek polis shows us that the protection of the body of the city-state depended on the sacrifice of the socially downtrodden, which has parallels with the situation today.

The most effective way of remaining relatively safe from the coronavirus is practicing social distancing. But that can be done only by those who have jobs that provide them with paid sick leave or the flexibility to work remotely.

For the homeless, hourly wage earners and some others, this is not an option. In China, rural migrant workers, who already faced financial pressures, are now unable to find work in major urban areas because of fear that they might be carrying the virus.

In the United States, the poor are most susceptible to the most negative consequences of a public health crisis. They are also the ones most likely to face increased inequalities as a result of the pandemic.

Today’s escalating public health emergency invites us to think critically about social values that many of us might think we had left in the past – although they exist very much in the present.

Meghan Henning, Assistant Professor of Christian Origins, University of Dayton and Candida Moss, Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham

Image: The Plague of Athens. Michiel Sweerts: Los Angeles County Museum of Art:Wikipedia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Echoes of Great Depression as jobless Australians queue for help

March 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Jobless Australians flooded unemployment offices around the country Monday as Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned the coronavirus pandemic would cause an economic crisis akin to the Great Depression.

After a record 29 years of economic growth, Australia is poised to spiral into recession as the global coronavirus outbreak wreaks havoc on the country’s economy despite a Aus$189 billion ($109 billion) government relief package

In scenes not seen in Australia for decades, queues stretched around the block at unemployment offices around the country as the forced closure of pubs, casinos, churches and gyms began at midday on Monday.

An online portal for government services also crashed as jobseekers rushed to register for income support payments, which have been temporarily doubled by Aus$550 a fortnight to help people cope with the coronavirus crisis.

With hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line, Morrison told his compatriots they faced an economic crisis “the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression”, referring to the global financial meltdown in the late 1920s and 1930s.

“They are lining up at Centrelink offices as we speak — something unimaginable at this scale, only weeks ago,” he told Parliament.

“They have lost their jobs, many, and we know many more will. This is the biggest economic shock our nation has faced in generations.”

Services Australia, which operates the social welfares offices known as Centrelink, urged people not to visit physical locations unless there was a “critical need” to do so.

After a key government website crashed, minister Stuart Robert initially claimed a demand surge had been worsened by hackers attempting a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

He later told Parliament the DDoS alarm had in fact been set off by almost 100,000 people trying to access the site at once.

Ahead of closing non-essential services, Australia had already shut its borders to international arrivals, while some interstate borders have been effectively shuttered and all non-essential travel is banned.

Morrison has warned the measures would remain in place across the country for up to six months, with stricter rules looming in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.

He said the once in a 100 years event meant that 2020 would be “the toughest year of our lives”.


Australia’s benchmark ASX 200 has lost 38 percent on coronavirus fears since its peak in mid-February, falling on Monday to lows not seen since November 2012.

Seven people have died from the disease in Australia, which has a death rate of just 0.44 percent compared to over four percent in countries like the United States, Britain and France.

The nation has recorded more than 1,600 cases of COVID-19, with infection rates accelerating in the most populous states.

Photo: Jobless Australians queue up at unemployment offices AFP

‘No way we can hold it’: Tokyo reacts to talk of Olympic delay

March 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


The Olympics rings are up and the cute wide-eyed mascots are plastered across billboards and commuter trains, but people in Tokyo are increasingly convinced the Games won’t happen this summer.

After weeks of pressure from athletes and sports associations, the International Olympic Committee this weekend acknowledged postponement is a possibility, and on Monday Japan’s prime minister said a decision to delay over the coronavirus may now be “inevitable”.

For many in Tokyo, that hardly feels like news, after a steady drumbeat about the pandemic that has now infected more than 325,000 people and killed over 14,400 worldwide.

“There is no way we can hold it,” 75-year-old Noriko Shuzui told AFP as she shopped in Tokyo’s Ginza district on Monday.

“Even if Japan had overcome the virus, if the world hadn’t we would receive no athletes, no spectators. No way we can do it.”

Japan has so far seen more than 1,000 infections and 41 deaths, but it has taken fewer measures to restrict daily life, scaling back but not cancelling a welcome ceremony for the Olympic torch last week.

Still, the news from around the world appears to have convinced people that the Games cannot be held as scheduled, with 69 percent of respondents polled by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun daily they thought it was now better to postpone the event.

Just 17 percent thought it would be best to hold the Games as planned, with eight percent convinced the Olympics should be cancelled altogether, the weekend poll showed.

Shuzui said a postponement seemed necessary under the circumstances.

“The first priority now is to fight the new coronavirus. Everyone was looking forward to it, so it would be sad and disappointing,” she said.

“But we’ve got to take some measures.”

She had harsh words for organisers and officials who until this weekend had insisted the Games would be able to go ahead as scheduled.

“I think it’s nonsense.”
‘Think about people’s safety’

The IOC and Japanese officials have said cancelling the Games is not on the table, with a postponement now seemingly the likeliest option despite posing formidable logistical challenges.

“It would be sad if it has to be postponed,” said Yudai Yamamoto, a trading firm employee, who said he was glad that cancellation didn’t appear to be on the table.

“I want to see the Games take place at some point,” the 22-year-old said.

Organisers have insisted that preparations were going ahead for the Games to open as scheduled on July 24, but the virus has already hit events from qualifiers to the torch relay.

Despite calls for people to avoid gathering in crowds, tens of thousands of people flocked to see the flame being displayed in northeastern Japan over the weekend, raising questions about whether the relay will be altered over safety concerns.

Naonobu Terashima, a 78-year-old pensioner, told AFP he wanted a decision to be taken based on safety.

“I’m sure it was a great deal of effort to bid for and win the Olympics. But… I don’t think we should take the risk of harming people’s health,” he said.

Tribes expect little help in fight to protect elders from coronavirus
2020/3/23

©Stateline.org

A tourist bus stops for a view of Monument Valley on the

 Utah/Arizona border. - Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/TNS

SEATTLE — When a resident of the Tulalip Tribe here in western Washington tested positive for coronavirus, Chairwoman Teri Gobin quickly let her people know the tribe’s priority in limiting the spread.

“Our Elders are the most vulnerable,” Gobin said in a video address. “The important thing is to make sure that our Elders are OK.” (In many Native communities, “Elder” is an official title.)

The tribe, whose reservation is north of Seattle, had already closed its senior center, and is limiting access to its Elders’ home. The individual who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the latest coronavirus, self-reported two weeks ago and “isolated immediately” after limited contact, the tribe said.

As tribes across the country take steps to fight the spread of the coronavirus, they’re doing so mindful that the virus has proven especially dangerous to the elderly, a venerated group in many Native communities.

In her address, Gobin urged Tulalip members to look after the needs of Elders “so they don’t have to be in the public, because they are the most at-risk.”

Dean Seneca, an epidemiologist who spent years working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, said that is exactly the response he would expect in Indian Country.

“If (the coronavirus) were to get into a bingo hall in a tribal community or a casino hall, it could be devastating for small communities,” said Seneca, a member of the Seneca Nation who now runs his own private firm. “Our Elders in many cases keep the oral traditions alive, they keep the culture going, they share a ton of information. They’re at the forefront of providing guidance to our young people.”

Adults older than 60 face the highest risk from a coronavirus infection, including greater mortality rates, according to the CDC.

John Okemah, the Tulalip Tribe’s chief medical officer, said officials are working to limit exposure to Elders, while explaining to older members why the precautions are in place.

Okemah spoke with Stateline one day before the tribe announced its positive case, but he was already worried about what might happen if the disease made its way into the tribal community, citing long testing delays and other concerns.

“If we have a case that does turn positive and we have to wait seven to eight days (for results), they’ve already exposed 10 people, then we have a mini epidemic,” he said. “My biggest concern is if we get one positive case, in most tribes around this country, you have families living in close proximity. By the time we get one household case, it’s going to skyrocket.”

The tribe has since published an account of a Tulalip family that is recovering from the virus, but no further cases have been reported.

The Seattle Indian Health Board, which runs an urban clinic that treats predominantly Native Americans and Alaska Natives, has been hit hard by the crisis. It’s had to cut back on many services.

But it’s continuing its Elders program, which provides food and resources, as well as cultural and social programs. About 75 people use the program each day.

“Forty percent of our Elders are homeless, and if they don’t have a place to come here to get a warm meal, then where are they going to go?” said Esther Lucero, the board’s CEO. “You’re making a decision of having them socially isolate under a bridge versus coming here and getting a warm meal and potentially being screened.”

The board is screening all Elders who come in, providing exams and distributing food in grocery bags instead of cooked meals.

Just south of Seattle, the Puyallup Tribe has closed its senior facility, the House of Respect Residence, to visitors. Elders have been urged to remain at home, while the lunch program usually hosted at the center will provide takeout sack lunches. The tribe also is looking to provide alternate working conditions for the Elders it employs.

South of Olympia, the Chehalis Tribe closed its Elder Center and is replacing the facility’s nutrition program with home-delivered meals. Tribes around the country are taking similar measures, while also seeking to meet cultural challenges.

“One challenge that we’re faced with right now is communicating with the elderly population and trying to explain what the virus is,” said Jared Touchin, communications director for the Navajo Nation, whose reservation spreads across parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

“It’s difficult to translate these complicated health terms,” he said. “We’re trying to provide information in the Navajo language as well as written materials to reach elderly population.”

The Navajo word for coronavirus, according to a tribal press release, is “Diko Ntsaaígíí-Náhást’éíts’áadah.”

A Navajo tribal member tested positive for the virus Tuesday, the Nation’s first known case.

The Navajo Nation, along with others like the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, has placed travel restrictions on tribal employees and discouraged visitors.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma canceled events and is asking its Elders to avoid crowds and large gatherings, said Julie Hubbard, the tribe’s executive director of communications.

Tribes have advantages as well as challenges in responding to the pandemic. Most tribes lack sprawling bureaucracies that can slow response to a crisis. Small leadership councils often are able to meet and act quickly, tribal officials said, unlike state legislatures, which must convene scores of members from a wide geographic region.

“We’re everything under one roof,” said Chuck Sams, communications director for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. “We’re the federal, state, county and local government. Our systems are more streamlined, so we’re able to move a little more quickly.”

Earlier this month, an employee at a casino operated by the Oregon tribe tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting a temporary closure and cleaning of the facility. Sams said the tribe has taken measures such as restricting travel.

Many tribes have closed their casinos and other public facilities. The Native gaming industry is asking the federal government for $18 billion in aid. Most tribes do not collect income or property taxes, and revenue from tribal enterprises like casinos and hotels pays for essential services like health and education.

Robert Anderson, director of the University of Washington’s Native American Law Center, noted that tribes’ status as sovereign nations enables them to act without waiting for other levels of government.

“Tribes have their own jurisdiction over their reservations and lands,” said Anderson, a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. “It’s unique in the way that tribes are governments that are really close and really responsive to their citizens and are careful to look out for them. That’s the beauty of being a small, responsive government — you can be fairly nimble.”

Like state governments that have taken drastic measures to enforce social distancing in recent days, tribal nations have broad powers to respond in cases of emergency, Anderson said, including some cases in which they have jurisdiction over non-Native members who live on tribal land. Many tribal nations have made emergency declarations in recent days.

That autonomy is an asset, but it’s also a necessity, tribal leaders said, because they expect little outside support.

“The (Chehalis) Tribe has long understood that if something like this were to happen, the federal government is not coming to our aid,” said Jeff Warnke, director of government and public relations for the southwest Washington tribe. “The federal government has certainly not reached out to us to let us know what we can expect or when to expect it. We’re going to take care of our own here.”

The $8.3 billion measure passed by Congress to fight coronavirus includes $40 million for tribes and tribal organizations. Leaders in Indian Country say that’s a paltry amount, and they expect long delays before the funding works its way through layers of bureaucracy to reach health care providers.

“That money is so minuscule, even after you get through the red tape of administering that $40 million — by the time it trickles down the Native community, it’s going to do very little,” said Seneca, the former CDC epidemiologist.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez has sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking how the funding will be distributed. Meanwhile, the National Council of Urban Indian Health has asked for $94 million “at the very least” for the 41 Urban Indian Organizations it represents, which provide services to many of the 70% of Natives who live outside reservations.

“As of right now, we’ve received no guidance and there’s no funding mechanism in place,” said Meredith Raimondi, the organization’s senior communications manager. “We’re just trying to get any answer we can from the administration.”

One of those urban clinics, the Seattle Indian Health Board, is losing $700,000 a month during the public health crisis. The funding gap is a huge problem, said Lucero, the CEO, because Native health care, unlike private systems, is a federally guaranteed right promised to tribes who ceded their land.

In Seattle, Native people are 10 times more likely to be homeless than any other ethnicity, Lucero said, and they’re more prone to being immunocompromised by diabetes and other conditions.

A quarter of the clinic’s own staff falls into those high-risk categories, which include pregnancy, and have been kept from working during the outbreak, leaving the center shorthanded.

Lucero said the shortage in testing supplies has been “infuriating,” and it’s taken a long time to get results back from the tests they have sent off. The clinic was down to its final three tests when Lucero spoke with Stateline. None of the clinic’s patients has tested positive for coronavirus. She is pushing for tribal health providers to be equipped to do testing in-house.

“Our community is very distrustful of institutionalized systems, especially health care systems,” she said. “We have to offer testing here, otherwise it’s not likely that our people will go to seek out tests.”

The Cherokee Nation can test for coronavirus within its own health system, while the Navajo Nation is able to do on-site testing as well. But many smaller tribes contacted by Stateline said they lack resources to conduct prompt testing.

Oglala Sioux Tribe President Julian Bear Runner declared a state of emergency after learning that the reservation’s hospital lacks testing supplies.

Tribal members can get health services at on-reservation clinics, some of which are run directly by the federal Indian Health Service, while others are overseen by tribes with some Indian Health Service funding. Off the reservation, Urban Indian Organizations, which also receive IHS funding, serve many other members.

In a letter obtained by Stateline, the IHS informed tribal clinic leaders that it would be sending them expired respirators with masks that might still perform safely. IHS officials admitted on a recent call with the White House that they have limited ability to track the spread of the virus, Seneca said.

“We don’t have good tracking in our tribal communities like states do with local health departments,” said Seneca, who was on the call. “That surveillance is not set up in Indian Country the way it should be.”

In a fact sheet shared with Stateline, the IHS advised clinics to collect samples with standard specimen swabs and send them to laboratories in their jurisdictions.

IHS said it is “working closely” with other federal agencies to determine how the funding allocated by Congress will be distributed to tribal care facilities “in a timely manner.”

Seneca said that Native communities are more prone to have several families under a single roof, as well as respiratory issues like high smoking rates and radon exposure.

“That’s a cocktail effect for disaster,” he said.

Amid the concern and confusion, some say that the social isolation necessary to stop the spread will cause more hardships for tribes. Jordan Lewis, a professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth who studies Native health, said that quarantines could affect the quality of life for many, including Elders often at the center of community life.

“(Elders) are the people communities go to in terms of ‘What should we be doing?’” said Lewis, an Aleut from the Native village of Naknek in Alaska. “They’ve lived a full life of experiences. They’re sought after for that knowledge across all ages.”

Several tribal leaders noted pandemics have been a tragic part of the Native American story, as diseases brought by Europeans killed vast numbers of Indigenous people on the continent.

“We’re still here,” Lucero said, “so we’re incredibly resilient.”

———

©2020 Stateline.org

In the Shadows of Poland and Russia: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden in the European Crisis of the mid-17th Century. PhD dissertation. 

Södertörn University, 2006, 347 pp.

Andrej Kotljarchuk 

This book examines and analyses the Union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden signed in 1655 at Kėdainiai and the political crisis that followed. The union was a result of strong separatist dreams among the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Protestant elite led by the Radziwiłł family, and if implemented it would radically change the balance of power in the Baltic Sea region. The main legal point of the Union was the breach of Lithuanian federation with Poland and the establishment of a federation with Sweden. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania aspired to return to international relations as a self-governing subject. The Union meant a new Scandinavian alternative to Polish and Russian domination. The author places the events in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the general crisis that occurred in Europe in the middle of the 17th century characterized by a great number of wars, rebellions and civil wars from Portugal to Ukraine, and which builds the background to the crisis for Lithuania and Sweden. The research proved the importance of lesser powers in changing the geopolitical balance between the Great Powers. The conflict over Lithuania and Belarus was the main reason for the Swedish-Russian, Polish-Russian and Ukrainian-Russian wars. The failure of the Union with Sweden was caused by both internal and external factors. Internally, various ethnic, confessional and political groups within the nobility of Lithuania were split in favour of different foreign powers – from Muscovy to Transylvania. The external cause for the failure of the Union project was the failure of Swedish strategy. Sweden concentrated its activity to Poland, not to Lithuania. After the Union, Swedish authorities treated the Grand Duchy as an invaded country, not an equal. The Swedish administration introduced heavy taxation and was unable to control the brutality of the army. As a result Sweden was defeated in both Lithuania and Poland. Among the different economic, political and religious explanations of the general crisis, the case of Lithuania shows the importance of the political conflicts. For the separatists of Lithuania the main motive to turn against Poland and to promote alliance with Sweden, Russia or the Cossacks was the inability of Poland to shield the Grand Duchy from a Russian invasion.The Lithuanian case was a provincial rebellion led by the native nobility against their monarch, based on tradition of the previous independence and statehood period. It was not nationalism in its modern meaning, but instead a crisis of identity in the form of a conflict between Patria and Central Power. However, the cost of being a part of Sweden or Muscovy was greater than the benefit of political protection. Therefore, the pro-Polish orientation prevailed when Poland after 1658 recovered its military ability the local nobility regrouped around Warsaw. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania managed to remain on the political map of Europe, but at the price of general religious Catholization and cultural Polonization. After the crisis, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gradually changed into a deep province of the Polish state.

https://www.academia.edu/16502312/In_the_Shadows_of_Poland_and_Russia_the_Grand_Duchy_of_Lithuania_and_Sweden_in_the_European_Crisis_of_the_mid-17th_Century._PhD_dissertation._S%C3%B6dert%C3%B6rn_University_2006_347_pp?sm=b

Survivalists have been prepping for a disaster scenario like coronavirus. Now, many feel vindicated

2020/3/23 ©The Philadelphia Inquirer

MICHAEL BRYANT/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

RINGTOWN, Pa. — When Dan Wowak went to live alone in the wilds of Patagonia in 2016 for a chance to win a half-million dollars on reality television, he was allowed to bring 10 items. Toilet paper wasn’t one of them.

Wowak, a Mahanoy City native, did bring an ax and saw, a sleeping bag and a ferro rod, which you can strike to make sparks in just about any condition. He also chose fishing line and hooks, which proved invaluable. Over 51 days, he ate nothing but fish he caught in a lake: nine of them.

“I lost 54 pounds,” he said. “I know what hunger feels like.”

Wowak, who worked in the juvenile justice system before becoming a full-time woodsman, left the reality show “Alone” early, choosing sanity, food and his family over the big prize. Today, at age 38, he teaches survival and outdoors classes through his company, Coal Cracker Bushcraft, giving crash courses in how to stay alive in the woods or when goods are scarce. He said he’s recently gotten hundreds of emails expressing interest as America quickly went from normal to empty supermarket shelves. He’s seen people making smart decisions, like social distancing, and bizarre ones, like grabbing all the toilet paper they can.

“You don’t use toilet paper if you’re out in the woods. Just grab some leaves and wipe your butt. At home, you can cut up old T-shirts,” he said. “I think, honestly, a lot of people just don’t know what to do. They see me buying toilet paper, they see you buying toilet paper and Uncle Frank, and they go looking for it.”

Wowak, who earned an MBA from Alvernia University in Reading, defines essentials as shelter, water, fire and food. Translated to a city or suburban environment, that could be a house, heat sources like blankets and fireplaces, your faucet, and extra cans of beans. If people remained calm and thought those needs out, he said, they’d find better alternatives at the store.

“I went to Target the other day and there was no water on the shelves,” he said. “I went over to the camping aisle and all the water purifiers and jugs were there. You could literally boil a pot of water in the morning and at night.”

Art Dawes, 51, of Lock Haven, runs PA Wilderness Skills, a business similar to Wowak’s. He said he took a survival class offered by his junior high school decades ago and has been hooked ever since.

“We were starting fires on the front lawn of the school,” he said.

Dawes said people should use the coronavirus pandemic to make plans, to list out things they would take with them if they had to leave home. They should brush up on basic car repair too.

“You never know if your car is going to break down,” he said.

Both woodsmen teach primitive skills to their students, such as making fire with a “bow drill,” the way cavemen might have done. But they’re also practical and carry tools that make lighting fire far easier.

“There’s a reason why lighters were invented,” Dawes said.

All across the country, people who identify as “preppers” have spent years stockpiling food, even ammunition, for disaster scenarios, and many feel vindicated as the coronavirus and efforts to stop it spread. They’ve often been ridiculed or called paranoid, but they say many of their critics are now asking for their help, or whether they can spare some of their surplus if times get tough.

One administrator for a Facebook prepper group said he’s been adding 2,000 members per week.

“The only story we want to tell is that everyone, every member of a community, should learn the basics of survival not only for themselves, but for their communities,” he said in a message.

Wowak and Dawes do not consider themselves “preppers,” both preferring to be called woodsmen who practice bushcraft. Wowak said he uses firearms for hunting, not “tactical” reasons, but believes trapping is more practical when looking for food.

Some Pennsylvania preppers agreed to speak to The Philadelphia Inquirer, but none would divulge their full names out of concern that their locations would be uncovered. Many declined to be interviewed, saying “the media” perpetuated the “prepper” stereotype.

Robert B., 40, of Lebanon County, said he and his daughters have “bug out bags” packed and ready in case they have to leave the house immediately. He owns 45 acres “elsewhere.” Bug out bags usually contain essentials like extra medicine, sleeping gear, tools, lighters, and more.

“We have prepped for different scenarios, from home invasions to mass rioting and pandemics to possible war,” Robert B. said.

None of the preppers could think of a specific event that caused them to start stockpiling.

“I guess growing up in extreme poverty and seeing how one bad day can turn into a major problem easily,” said Michelle, 44, from Centre County.

Many say the reaction to the coronavirus — massive layoffs, scarcity of food and goods, relaxed law enforcement for certain crimes — could be as bad as the virus itself, which might explain the uptick in gun and ammunition sales. A gun store owner in Montgomery County told The Inquirer last week that he could not order more ammunition. When asked if he had firearms, prepper Jon K., of Erie County, said, “Use your imagination.”

The most important aspect of prepping, in Jon K.’s opinion, is preserving water and food, either through drying or canning. Michelle has a greenhouse and root cellar at her home.

Wowak and Dawes agree that in a survival scenario, finding food is the most critical and difficult task. Buying milk and fresh meat is thinking very much in the present, Wowak said, but when shopping for a protracted quarantine, look for canned foods, protein bars, nuts, and even pasta, high-caloric foods that can last.

In nature, Wowak said, smaller foods like blueberries or frogs are easiest to eat, but low in calories. Large sources of protein like deer or turkey are more complicated, even with a firearm.

“If you were able to kill a deer and it was 70 degrees out, would you be able to preserve it?” Wowak said.

Both men tell their students to avoid eating plants unless they’re really skilled at identifying them. Many can make you sick or worse. Dawes suggested buying field guides to edible plants and adding them to a bug out bag.

Though he was on television, Wowak said a lot of strategies perpetuated by film and television aren’t quite practical in a true survival situation — like roasting a fish on an open fire and simply eating the fillets. He prefers to boil them whole and basically consume everything but the bones to get every calorie.

“Even the fish heads,” he said. “The eyeballs kind of liquefy.”

———

©2020 The Philadelphia Inquirer

MICHAEL BRYANT/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

ARBEIT MACHT FREI
Trump unleashes late-night Twitter rant suggesting he’ll ‘cure’ coronavirus crisis by sending America back to work

March 23, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement


Trump’s Tweet Creates Images of Dystopian Sci-Fi: ‘Is This How the Hunger Games Began?’

At ten minutes to midnight on Sunday President Donald Trump launched a disturbing all-caps Twitter rant that suggests his “plan” to cure the coronavirus crisis will be to send everyone back to work, thus likely killing millions.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Trump actually tweeted, proving he values profits over people and saying clearly that if people have to die so the economy can get better than so be it.

“AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020


Sunday marked day seven of the 15-day “stay at home” policy just one-third of the nation is under.

It’s not surprising, given his recent statements on the coronavirus pandemic.

For instance, barely more than two weeks ago, on March 5, Trump lied about what medical experts were saying while he tried to minimize the lethality of COVID-19. The President falsely suggested to Americans it is not dangerous to report to work as normal if they have the deadly coronavirus – and even went so far as to say going back to work will make people get better.

“So we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that just get better, by, you know, sitting around and even going to work,” Trump lied.

Thousands of people did not recover from the deadly coronavirus by “going to work.”

But it looks like the President is poised to consider implementing that as policy, instituting what Britain tried – until a study showed “that as many as 250,000 people could die as a result.”

Here’s how some are responding:

Translation: Trump cares about the Dow Jones Industrial Average and his re-election chances more than he cares about the lives of the American people.
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) March 23, 2020


Trump is literally torn between two choices. He can either redirect people fears and anxiety about the coronavirus and the economy towards Asian Americans as vulnerable scapegoats like a racist demagogue or he can go back to, “it’s just the flu, bro.”
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) March 23, 2020


Is this how the Hunger games began? https://t.co/Qe0MXzJwwO
— Chuck (@ChuckChaneyBCTG) March 23, 2020

Good luck everyone. https://t.co/GFcDUpHMzO
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 23, 2020

Is he hinting at lifting quarantine to initiate widespread herd immunity… scary https://t.co/WcEGRsbzUf
— matteo di bernardo (@Dibernardo_10) March 23, 2020

TL;dr: “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.” https://t.co/9Sr0dp4ksf
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 23, 2020

If you’re thinking about herd immunity, you go first big guy https://t.co/P1NAwFEEIl
— eu_נøиαтħαи 

#VampiradaXOpalas (@Jn_malvadous) March 23, 2020


Remember 2016, talk of taking his phone away because it was embarrassing? I’m not hearing that now, yet behold: all caps vague-tweeting about pivoting pandemic strategy to herd immunity nine hours before the NYSE opens completely electronic, no humans, for the first time ever https://t.co/Qk8wxEKJuk
— Joe Spurr (@joespurr) March 23, 2020


YOUR INCOMPETENCE IS STAGGERING…
— Andy Ostroy (@AndyOstroy) March 23, 2020


Looks like theres another herd immunity strategy in the works https://t.co/vWgR2pwmbc
— simon

 

(@bolloticks) March 23, 2020

P.S. It’s midnight and we’re in the greatest national health and financial crisis in decades, and you’re supposed to be leading the nation.
Why in the hell are you tweeting right now, you malignant fraud? pic.twitter.com/PMhTuKRmBW
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) March 23, 2020